Chris Weimer

This is the most bizzare part of this Al-Ahram article. Since when is the Second Intermidate Period (when Joseph presumably lived) an “early period” when writing was “still in its early stages”!!?? Ancient Egypt was already ancient by that time and writing had already been in use for at least 1500 years. In my Middle Egyptian language classes, I read full-blown Egyptian literature that had been written centuries before Joseph lived.

An excellent example of proper presentation of a surprising phenomenon related to the development of coinage is Christine M. Thompson, “Sealed Silver in Iron Age Cisjordan and the ‘Invention’ of Coinage,” _Oxford Journal of Archaeology_ 22 (2003) 67–107; published online: 4 March 2003; available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0092.00005 . Speaking of precious metal discovered in shapes other than discs, the abstract reads, in part, “. . . [S]eals affixed to precious metals at times qualified them in a numismatic sense by guaranteeing weights set to standards as well as controlled composition.” Thompson’s article is the fruit of years of painstaking work and deserves much more attention than sensationalistic news items which provide no evidence.

Because the photographs of scarabs are not labeled, I did not think that they were anything more than decoration for the article.